Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Stylish reissue of a classic first published in the 1970s: Hunter S Thompson’s ether-fuelled, savage journey to the heart of the American Dream.
‘We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold… And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas…’

As knights of old buckled on armour of supernatural power, so Hunter S. Thompson enters Las Vegas armed with a veritable arsenal of ‘heinous chemicals’. His perilous, drug-enhanced confrontations with casino operators, bartenders, police officers and assorted representatives of the Silent Majority have a hallucinatory humour and nightmare terror never before seen on the printed page.

“'There are only two adjectives writers care about…brilliant and outrageous. Hunter Thompson has a freehold on both of them. Fear and Loathing is a scorching epochal sensation.' Tom Wolfe 'What goes on in these pages makes Lenny Bruce seem angelic…the whole book boils down to a mad, corrosive prose poetry that picks up where Norman Mailer's An American Dream left off and explores what Tom Wolfe left out.' New York Times”

'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a scorching epochal sensation. There are only two adjectives writers care about any more! "brilliant" and "outrageous"! and Hunter Thompson has a freehold on both of them.' Tom Wolfe 'What goes on in these pages makes Lenny Bruce seem angelic! the whole book boils down to a mad, corrosive prose poetry that picks up where Norman Mailer's An American Dream left off and explores what Tom Wolfe left out.' New York Times

Hunter S. Thompson is incomparably the most celebrated exponent of the New Journalism. His books include Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 and Generation of Swine.Ralph Steadman is one of Britain’s best-known cartoonists and illustrators. His books include I, Leonardo and the bestselling illustrated Animal Farm.

'We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive ..."' Hunter S. Thompson is roaring down the desert highway to Las Vegas with his attorney, the Samoan, to find the dark side of the American Dream. Armed with a drug arsenal of stupendous proportions, the duo engage in a surreal succession of chemically enhanced confrontations with casino operators, police officers and assorted Middle Americans. This stylish reissue of Hunter S. Thompson's iconic masterpiece, a controversial bestseller when it appeared in 1971, features the brilliant Ralph Steadman illustrations of the original. It brings to a new generation the hallucinatory humour and nightmare terror of Hunter S. Thompson's musings on the collapse of the American Dream.

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